


Seven Footsteps

by EudociaCovert



Series: The Best Path [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And daddy issues, Angst, Character Study, Cuz everyone loves Smellerbee, Death, Gen, It isn't fun, Kinda stream of consciousness, Refugees, War With Actual Consequences, With a hint of Smellerbee, Zuko has mommy issues, Zuko has to think about things, and just plain issues, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 09:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4015042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EudociaCovert/pseuds/EudociaCovert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven days in the Si Wong desert. Zuko finds himself questioning the War. 4th in 'The Best Path' series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Footsteps

Zuko awakens with bile on his tongue and his mother’s voice in his head, the ghost of her touch on his shoulders. The sand is cool underneath him, the sky a breaking pink and orange. Longshot is lying several feet away, his hat covering his face and Smellerbee tucked into his side. Zuko turns his head and there is Jet, watching him from across the clearing. He looks soft and eerie in the breaking light, and Zuko looks away, pushing himself up, gritting his teeth against the soreness from sleeping on the ground, from the ache in his legs, from his constant hunger. He didn’t mean to sleep.

Nothing good happens while you sleep.

“Hey-” Jet starts, and Zuko can’t handle anything from him, not after the horrifying attempt at comfort the day before.

“I’ll patrol the back left side,” Zuko interrupts, his voice broken and heavy from sleep.

Jet tilts his head back and regards Zuko with an unfamiliar expression. It makes Zuko feel weak, uncomfortable. “Okay,” Jet says.

Zuko nods curtly, and walks away. He can feel Jet’s eyes on his back the entire walk down to the caravan.

\--

There’s a woman named Chao-Ling who was obviously a noblewoman before she was a refugee, who moves and speaks with the same grace and casual influence Zuko remembers from his mother. It’s probably pathetic, how much that draws Zuko to her, but he can’t quite bring himself to care. There isn’t anyone here to impress.

“Here’s our new friend,” She tells her daughter Min when Zuko approaches the second time.

Min looks up, shy. Zuko waves to her, awkwardly, and frowns at the ground. “May I walk with you a ways?” he asks Chao-Xing, without meeting her eyes. They’re dark eyes, nothing like his mother’s, but they’re gentle in a way no one else ever was.

“I would be honored,” Chao-Xing says, and her mild smile stings in Zuko’s gut.

\---

“I shouldn’t be here.” Zuko says, just to feel the words in his mouth.

Smellerbee turns her head to observe him, her hands never stopping as she sharpens her blade. The light is dying and the rhythmic sound of metal on stone is it's own kind of lullaby.

“Do you have anywhere else to go?” She says, not unkindly.

“No,” Zuko says. He doesn’t.

\---

Zuko wakes the fourth day with both the sun and a measure of discomfort, as he always does these days. His back and neck are sore from sleeping on the ground, the muscles in his thighs and calves aching from days of walking and riding, and his stomach a painful hollow, sharper in the morning without worry and heat and activity to distract him.

“You’re always up so early.”

Zuko tenses, the hand on the grip of his duel Dao swords twitching in readiness to draw. His eyes dart around, cataloging Jet sitting cross-legged with his hook swords resting comfortably across his lap a respectable distance away, and Longshot and Smellerbee sleeping on opposite sides of the smoldering remains of their fire.

His shoulders drop, and then tense when he catches himself relaxing.

No. Jet is not just Jet, he’s a threat. He’s…

Jet’s family burned, and he’s so angry, but he listens to his friends. He’s a leader and a game player and a liar, and Zuko has never seen a smile as dangerous as his outside of the Fire Nation Palace, outside of Azula. Jet wears Fire Nation red like a dare, like a scream, and he’d kill Zuko if he knew who he was. He can never be ‘just Jet’ to Zuko because while Jet doesn’t know how different they are, Zuko can’t forget.

Zuko pulls himself upright, smothering a groan as his blood flows through sleepy limbs. He is so sick of living like this, he thinks, rubbing life into numb hands. His grip has become weak in the mornings, and that potential handicap bothers him even more than the hunger, than the perpetual dizziness. Zuko rubs at his eyes, more tired than he had been before sleeping and angry at himself for drifting off in the presence of enemies.

“That’s a bad habit, forcing yourself to stay awake until you can't anymore. It’ll make you slow.” Jet says. Zuko snorts, dropping his hand to find the Earth Kingdom boy frowning.

“I know how to fight on no sleep.” Zuko says shortly.

Jet shrugs. “You still shouldn’t put yourself in that position when you don’t have to. You can rest here. We’ll watch your back.”

Zuko gives him an incredulous look as he stands. Jet’s expression is earnest and solemn, and Zuko wants to punch the sympathy out of it. “No. Stop talking.”

Jet tilts his head back, a calculative look in his eyes as he just watches Zuko. That particular look has been showing up on Jet’s face more and more often, and it makes Zuko’s skin crawl. “What’s so bad about having some help?” Jet asks.

“It’s a bad habit.” Zuko almost growls, throwing Jet’s words back at him.

“It’s necessary.” Jet counters. “You’ll run yourself into the ground, going like you are now.”

“That isn’t your business,” Zuko tells him, and turns to scan the desert around them. There’s a little movement in the caravan below, but not much.

“Yeah, it’s no one’s business but yours. That’s the problem.” Jet sighs. He’s still sitting, a vulnerable position, the idiot. “Look…”

“Quit pushing!” Zuko finally snaps. His hands are fisted so hard they’re shaking, and he’s not ready for this. He’s barely holding it together with the weight of his despair, months on his own, and the brutal, visible reality of the women and children trekking through a deadly desert because of him, his nation. He can’t handle anything more, or he’s going to break. “Just tell me what you want from me,” he says. “Stop playing games.”

Jet stares at him for a bit, then lets his breath out in one heavy whoosh. “Listen… people like us need to look after each other, because no one else will. I know you think no one understands you, that you have no place in the world, but...”

The silence hangs for a moment, as Jet weighs his next words. Zuko finds he doesn't need them. “You want me to join your group,” he realizes. Zuko wants to laugh, and panic and maybe scream a little. His people, his country, his father, they all discarded him like trash… and it’s this backwoods Earth Kingdom rebel who wants him. It’s a bad joke.

Zuko’s entire life is a bad joke.

“When we get out of this desert you can stick with us or leave, and I won’t stop you,” Jet says, “No tricks, no games, your choice. But if you want to stay with us, we’ll take you. Just think about it. Okay? Deal?”

Zuko stares. It’s an invitation. A chance of a new life made of fear and strife and lies, and inevitable tragedy.

Something bitter and vicious in him wonders how different that would be from his old one.

“Hey.” Jet stands in one fluid move, and steps forward, carefully. “Are you alright?”

Zuko grits his teeth and pushes his emotions back, trying to think this through logically. He can’t. All he can think about is Uncle saying his father might not take him back even if he catches the Avatar, Azula’s face as she talked about locking him up somewhere he can’t be a disappointment anymore, and how he has no idea how to deal with someone wanting him.

 _Maybe you could find a nice Earth Kingdom family to adopt you!_ A sweet, spiteful voice rings in his memory.

Spirits damn it all.

Zuko turns on his heel and leaves. Jet doesn’t call after him.

The most horrifying part of the whole disaster is how Zuko can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not.

\--

“He’s infected,” Zuko says. An old man with despair on his face and moisture in his eyes looks up at him from where he’s crouched over a younger man squirming in the back of a wagon, sweat thick on his brow. “Do you have any medicine? Herbs?”

The man shakes his head.

Zuko nods. “I’ll see if I can find something.”

He turns to leave, but the old man catches his sleeve in shaking fingers, so he stills. “How do you know he is infected? The burn is covered, you can’t even see it.”

Zuko frees his arm carefully, turning to face the man fully for the first time. He feels the shock through his grip on the frail wrist when the man sees his scar.

Zuko keeps his voice even and his face clear. “I recognized the smell.”

The man stares for a moment, and then lays a comforting hand on his shoulder. Even in the midst of his own pain, he offers Zuko his smile, his sympathy. Fire burns in Zuko's belly, and he feels like a thief.

\---

“Look, I made her prettier!” Min, Chao-XIng's daughter, says brightly.

Zuko looks. “My sister used to do things like that.”

Min smiles up at him, a small doll made of rags and twine instead of porcelain and silk in front of her, its face distorted by the stain of oil on her cloth cheeks. “Is your sister here?”

“No.”

“Oh,” Min pushes herself off of the ground, crawling forward until she’s seated right in front of Zuko's crossed legs. With a solemn face she cups both of his cheeks in little oily hands. Zuko stays very still.

“My daddy isn’t here either,” she says. “He went to war and got burned up. Did your sister get burned up?”

Zuko thinks about Azula’s smile. Her lies, her cruelty, her need for fear and lack of empathy, her sharp genius and obsessive perfection. The perfect one. He thinks about a girl he lost a very long time ago, who used to look up to him, to smile without knives in her eyes.

“Yeah, I guess she did.” He says, and his chest aches.

\---

When Longshot has nightmares, he screams. He screams, his face twisted and his fists clenched, but he never ever makes a single sound.

\---

“You have a troubled face today.” Chao-Xing says on the fifth day. Zuko turns to find her watching him with regal concern. An expression his mother often had. Has. Had. “Is something wrong?” she asks.” Are your friends alright?”

“They aren’t my friends,” Zuko corrects her. He knows what the Fire Nation has cost these people, Jet, Longshot and Smellerbee in particular. Zuko won’t be their friend.

“They worry for you, as friends should.” Chao-Xing persists. Min sighs long and hard, barely lifting her feet as she shuffles through the sand beside them. There’s a weariness in her young bones that’s tempered be the dogged persistence Zuko is learning is a great part of the Earth Kingdom people. Min is six, and he can feel her ribs through her clothing when he lets her ride on his back.

“Well, they shouldn’t.” Zuko tells Chao-Xing as he swings Min up onto his hip. She perks up, looking around at everything with big eyes, as if everything has changed now that she has a new vantage point. It puzzles Zuko, both gladdening and saddening him, how the children here seem to take their horrid misfortune in stride, finding fun and life everywhere.

“And why should no one be your friend?” Chao-Xing raises an eyebrow at him, like he’s nothing but a silly child.

“Because it would be cruel,” Zuko answers.

“Hey, Blue!” Jet’s voice rings out. Zuko looks up, spots the boy jogging towards him. His already dark skin has deepened in color due to the constant sun, and it renders his grin even more blinding.

“I told you not to call me that,” Zuko grumbles as Chao-Xing sends Jet a welcoming hello.

“Well you didn’t give me anything else,” Jet shrugs, and sneaks Min out of Zuko’s arms, swinging her around to bring out the bright clear sounds of shrieks and laughter. “Got to call you something,”

“No you don’t,” Zuko protests, uselessly.

“Go on, go on,” Chao-Xing shoos him, slipping her pack from his shoulders. She doesn’t look much like what Zuko can remember of his mother, but her kind touch and quiet steel remind him strongly of Ursa. He wonders if all mothers are like that.

“You heard the woman! C’mon, I have something to show you.” Jet smiles, setting a giggling Min down. “You too if you’re mom doesn’t mind, Min.”

“Go ahead,” Chao-Xing smiles. “I know she’s in good hands.”

“She’ll be safe,” Zuko tells her seriously, and Jet rolls his eyes with a sad fond twist to his mouth that makes Zuko feel exposed and pointlessly angry.

“Right, nothing is getting this little warrior,” Jet agrees, swinging her onto his shoulders with swift move that indicates long practice. Zuko wonders if he had siblings. “If anyone tries something funny she’ll just punch them in the nuts, right Min?”

“Punch them in the nuts!” Min crows.

“Jet,” Zuko groans in a strangled voice, pinching his nose in mortification. Jet grins at having gotten a reaction from Zuko, and Chao-Xing just laughs.

Jet threads through the caravan like he grew up there, calling out to people and patting backs as he goes. He’s learned everyone’s names, somehow, and where they’re from, what they did… why they left. It’s something even Azula could never manage, preferring to foster fear instead of the camaraderie Jet achieves so effortlessly, and Zuko’s not sure what to think about it, besides that it’s dangerous. Most everything Jet’s good at is.

Zuko wonders what it’s like, to be able to understand people the way Jet can. Zuko can’t even understand himself.

“Right up here,” Jet jogs a few steps, causing Min to bounce alarmingly on his shoulders, waving Zuko towards him over his shoulder. There’s a gaggle of children arranged in a semi-circle around the back end of one of the wagons, peering under the wheels. Jet crouches down with them and lets Min slip off his shoulders, not a bit self-conscious sitting in the dirt with a bunch of half-starved kids. “Take a look, Blue.”  
Zuko kneels a few feet back from the chaos and peers carefully under the wagon. Two glowing eyes meet his, round and wild and small.

“What is it?” Min whispers loudly.

“Raccoon-cat, I think.” Jet whispers back. “Looks like she had her babies on that shelf of wood there, and couldn’t move them in time when the wagon moved, so they came with us.”

“Babies?” Min squeals.

“And she stuck with them?” one of the older boys asks, folding his skinny arms over his chest. “Why? She must have been scared spitless when the wagons started moving.”

“Because she’s a mom,” Zuko answers, to his own surprise. “Moms do incredible things, when their kids are in danger.” He carefully avoids Jet’s eyes, moving closer for a better look at the raccoon-cat.

There’s a beat of silence, the kids much less at ease with Zuko than they are with Jet, but Jet proposes that they name her, and the kids erupt in noise, shouting suggestions and demands until a disgruntled hissing from under the wagon brings the racket down to furious whispers.  
Zuko looks up and finds Jet watching him with something sad in his eyes.

Zuko doesn’t understand how anyone could ever want to be wanted. It seems so terribly painful.

\---

“Lu’s leaving tomorrow,” Jet says, cross-legged in the cooling sand, across from Zuko. It’s becoming easier to sleep in the trio’s presence, more so than it is sleeping anywhere else in the caravan. Zuko spoons his slop into his mouth and tries not to think about it.

“So we’ll be on our own.” Smellerbee states in a tired, worried voice.

It’s a heavy thought, but Zuko was born to carry the weight of his people on his shoulders, and while these might not be HIS people, he can’t really see them as enemies either. Just unfortunate casualties of a war that sits heavier in his heart every day. He doesn’t mind carrying them, for a while.

“We can handle it,” Jet says firmly, and Smellerbee’s shoulders loosen a bit, like if Jet says so with enough conviction the world will fall into line with his promises. Zuko feels for them, and it aches. While the other refugees are obviously civilians, Jet and his friends are just as obviously fighters, with Fire Nation blood on their hands. Zuko hasn’t forgotten the hate Jet had shown towards his kind, or the fact that Jet had lost everything to the war.

And yet that hate feels justified, here in the midst of these people. When Zuko walks beside Chao-Xing with her starving child and absent husband, watches the nightmares which haunt the night and sit just out of sight in the daytime, when he catches the scent of infected flesh and spots the edges of old scars, he hates the Fire Nation too, just a little, and hates the war with everything in him.

The thought hurts, choking and searing and turning through his chest and Zuko can’t breathe through the ache, the tearing blinding panic suffocating him, throwing off his breathing and pounding in his head.

“Hey.”

Zuko’s head snaps up. Jet’s watching him, and there’s something old and strange in his eyes. Zuko can’t name it, but he thinks his mother’s eyes used to look like that sometimes. The light is weird, darker, and the shadows longer. Longshot and Smellerbee nowhere to be seen. Zuko’s bowl is cold in his hands.

“Where did you go?” Jet asks, quiet.

“Why do you care?” Zuko snaps back, and then “don’t answer that,” because Jet’s comfort will always sting worse than his hatred ever could.

Jet doesn’t answer. Instead he waits until Zuko begins to calm, and then he says in the same tone he uses to assure Smellerbee, “People are allowed to care about you.”

Zuko stands, angry and hurt and confused and itching for something to burn, and he can’t not think about it anymore, why can’t he just not think? He wants something to rage at, but there’s nothing in this blasted desert but victims.

It’s too much. He’s lost too much, endured too much, seen too much, and never has regaining his honor felt like it means something other than going home, before.

“You can’t care about me.” Zuko tells Jet, almost desperate. This would be so much easier if he didn't.

And Jet, infuriating, terrifying Jet, tilts his head up and asks him, “Why not?”

There are so many reasons. Because he is Fire Nation. Because he doesn’t belong here. Because they think he is a victim of this war, when he is not. Because he chased the whispers of the Avatar for three years, sailed to the poles, the Earth Kingdom, the blasted Air Temples, has lived with the war his whole life, and never once thought about what it really meant. Because while he was living and growing and striving, when he was abandoned and burned and angry, they were too. Because they look at his branded face with more compassion then any of Zuko’s people ever have.

Because when he thinks of who he is, of being Prince, and Heir, and Fire Nation, the son of his father and mother, he doesn’t feel pride anymore. He sees these starving, dying, striving, living people and feels guilt. And he can’t let anyone make him think too deeply about that, or he fears he will lose everything he is.

He just wants to go home. But even if he could…

He’ll never forget this. He’ll never forget Song, and Li, and Jet. He’ll never look at battle maps and talk strategy without seeing burns and hunger and hate, without feeling his father’s fire laden hand cupping his face.

His father sent him away to teach him a lesson, to give him a chance to regain his honor. The lesson Zuko is learning is one he’s sure his father didn’t mean to teach him, and his honor…

He isn’t even sure what that means, anymore.

"Here, I'll save you the trouble," Jet says, but he doesn't sound angry. He even smiles a bit, before he turns and walks away.

\--

The war has to be right. His father is right. He has to be, because if he had been wrong about something as massive as the necessity of the war, what else could he be wrong about? Could he have been wrong about Zuko?

\--

He finds Chao-Xing, without really thinking about it. She’s sitting on the edge of one of the camp fires, treading careful fingers through her daughter’s hair. She smiles gently when Zuko sits next to her, but doesn’t ask why he’s there.

“You look tired,” she says gently. It’s her gentleness more than her looks which keep pulling him back to her, keeps him clinging to the kindness in her voice like he’s trying to hold onto a ghost.

Zuko means to straighten his shoulders, but ends up with his head in his hands instead. “I don’t think I know who I am anymore.” He says it like an apology, less to Chao-Xing and more to the mother he loved, long gone.

Chao-Xing just nods, and somehow her concern never burns like Jet’s does. “I’m sure you will remember, eventually.”

\---

Zuko misses his uncle.

\---

“Spar with me.” Jet says on the sixth day.

Zuko glances at him, finding him staring dispassionately at the horizon. “No thanks.”

“Really,” Jet persists, “You need to let loose a little. Staying that tense for that long can’t be good for you.”

“No,” Zuko says, although he’s pretty sure Jet is right. “I need to be at top form, if there’s a problem.”

“You aren’t at top form now,” Jet points out. “Besides, that’s the nice part of being part of a group. If something happens Longshot and Smellerbee will still be fresh.”

“I’m not part of your group,” Zuko says. Jet hums, but doesn’t agree. Zuko clenches his fists and counts to ten in his head.

Jet shifts his shoulders and turns towards him. His expression is serious and a bit empathetic, and it puts Zuko on edge. “Look, I understand what you’re going through. All these people are counting on us, and you don’t want to let them down.” Jet’s hand twitches like he wants to place it on Zuko’s shoulder, but he knows better. “You need to be careful with that. I’ve been there before, and the consequences aren’t pretty. You have to let someone help carry the load, or you’ll end up doing something stupid and drastic.”

Zuko watches him closely, softening despite himself. He isn’t that good at spotting lies, but he’s better at spotting true pain. He’s not sure if Jet has figured this out and is using it to get Zuko to do what he wants, or if all Jet’s truths are based in pain. Either way, it draws Zuko a bit closer to the other boy, against his better judgment.

Deciding it is inevitable, and uncomfortably aware of the ache from holding his shoulders straight for so long, Zuko gives in with a heavy sigh. “Flats, or live blades?”

Jet’s grin could cut metal. “That’s a question?”

A thread of dry amusement curls in Zuko’s belly. “No, I guess not.” Jet whistles ‘out of action’ and ‘safe’ in quick succession for Smellerbee and Longshot, and Zuko catches the barest edge of a smirk as he turns away from him.

“Right up here should be a good spot,” Jet says, jogging out of the wagon line and into a large divot in the desert sand. Zuko’s swords grind against the sand that Zuko can’t keep out of the sheath as he draws them, and he grimaces at the sound.

“Rules?” Jet asks, unhooking his hook swords from his sides, swiping them in front of himself with a flourish and settling into a stance, crouched and balancing on his toes.

“Stay out of the caravan,” Zuko says quickly.

Jet nods curtly, and stills, watching Zuko. Zuko does the same, wary. He’s pretty sure the only thing he can expect from a spar with Jet is a dirty fight. As predicted when Jet moves, it’s to dip his hooks down into the sand and fling, sending dirt flying into Zuko’s face. Zuko makes a startled noise and spins to the side, catching most of the dust on his left, where he’s already used to accounting for vision loss. He completes the spin with brutal speed and strikes out with his right sword, almost catching Jet’s left cheek, but clanging against his hook sword instead as Jet jerks backwards.

Zuko pushes the advantage, bringing his left sword at Jet’s side, but Jet slides away, throwing a hook out to catch at Zuko’s ankles as he slips behind him. Instead of dodging Zuko stomps, pinning Jet’s weapon with his foot, switches his hold and jabs his blades behind him in a way his original Sword Master would have yelled at him for. The jar of metal on metal and Jet’s curse, followed by the loss of tension as Jet’s forced to drop the weapon trapped under Zuko’s foot gives Zuko a sense of satisfaction. He's always been better with his Dao than with fire.

Zuko uses Jet's momentary distraction to lurch forward and around, putting Jet back in his line of vision.

There’s a shallow cut on Jet’s forehead and he’s grinning. “That was insane.” He comments, approvingly.

Zuko doesn’t answer, instead slashing at knee level when Jet starts for his fallen blade, slipping into a more traditional stance and moving in several swings meant to break Jet’s stance. The sound of meeting metal and the feel of the sand under his feet consume Zuko’s mind, and the perpetual worry and sense of impending disaster falls away as he moves.

Jet manages to get close enough to swing his empty fist at Zuko’s face, barely brushing his scarred side as Zuko turns away from the hit, losing his feet as Jet’s remaining sword catches him around the back of his shoe. Zuko pushes off with his remaining foot instead of stepping backwards, sending a kick that is only lacking fire by iron control at Jet’s head as he falls. Jet swings under the kick while releasing Zuko’s leg and stabs his free blade forward over Zuko’s guard as Zuko hits the ground, tearing the cloth of his shirt and barely grazing the skin of his shoulder.

Zuko brings both feet in and kicks out, catching Jet solidly in the stomach and uses the force of the kick to roll backwards and regain his feet. By the time he’s standing Jet is wheezing a little, but at ready again, both hook swords in hand.

“Feeling better?” Jet smirks.

Zuko stops thinking and just moves.

\--

The young man with the infection dies in the night. The caravan stills the next morning, staying silent as Jet and Longshot empty out a hollow in the sand and lower the body in, with grim faces and practiced hands. It’s the first time Zuko’s seen a body buried as opposed to burned. Getting to his knees beside Jet and helping him push the shifting sand over the corpse is the easiest decision he's made in days.

The old man begins to cry.

\---

“Even if I do remember who I was,” Zuko whispers at the darkening sky, his voice cracking, “I’m not sure I want to be him again. I don’t think I can.”

 _I’m sorry, Mom,_ he means. _I don’t think I can do what you asked._

Because even if Zuko went home now, even if he was restored to his country, his birthright, his family, even if his father welcomed him back with open arms and uncharacteristic forgiveness… Zuko will always have this with him. He’d always remember these burning, dying, stubbornly living people, and he will never be able to be the kind of Firelord his father would approve of.

Even if he regains his honor, it will not be enough anymore. It will not fix the mess in his head. He thinks this, knows it’s true, and wants to cry.

“Then maybe,” Chao-Zing says, “You should let yourself become someone else.”

And here, in this wretched camp, suspended somewhere between stubbornness and desperation, sitting next to a ghost, Zuko thinks that maybe, just maybe, that’s the only choice he has left.

\---

“Let me take a turn on watch," Zuko asks Jet on the seventh night, and tries to think of it as a beginning, and not an ending.


End file.
